Chapter Text
“You know,” Bradley says, leaning on his elbows against the railing outside the Hard Deck, “most of the big events in my life just kind of happened to me.”
There are a lot of things Jake could say in response. Seems like you spend too long on your perch, Rooster, if he’s looking to return things to the status quo. Ever try taking charge? if he’s looking to return things to the other status quo, the one they don’t talk about.
If you have a problem with taking orders, why the fuck did you join the Navy? if he wants to have a real, honest-to-God conversation.
Maybe he took too big a page out of Bradley’s book, these last few weeks, because he takes a sip of his beer, says nothing at all and waits for Bradley to finish the thought.
“My parents dying…” Bradley trails off. Jake barely even dares breathe. Bradley’s never mentioned them to him, not like this, not like it’s something he can talk about. Jake’s spent actual hours of his life eaten up with envy that Bradley talks to Phoenix about this stuff, but not with Jake, not with the person he—
Well.
“I was sixteen, when my mom went,” Bradley says. “But you knew that part.”
Fucking Jake Seresin was not exactly a bright idea.
It’s weird, because Bradley’s supposed to be smart. Smart enough to get through all the required math you need to know to fly a jet, smart enough that he doesn’t waste half his life doing it. He’s a shoe-in, a legacy pilot, and that’s why it smarts so goddamn much he’s here so late, getting his wings four years past when he should have already been in the cockpit.
Still, he makes it work. Rocks the mustache and the aviators to Advanced Training, the Hawaiian shirts when he can wear civvies. Mav doesn’t want him following his dad’s footsteps? Tough shit, Bradley’s gonna retread them so thoroughly the name Bradshaw will be synonymous with ‘naval aviator’. Nothing’s gonna keep him away from that destiny. He’s made it to the last stop on the road; it’s a year of training in Kingsville, Texas, and then he’ll be where he’s meant to.
Still, he thinks, looking down at Jake’s blond head pillowed on his shoulder.
This is probably not that smart.
Destiny’s calling, and destiny has some pretty bullshit opinions about what Bradley did with Jake in his military-issue sheets, with their military-issue shoes kicked off at the door and their military-issue uniforms on the floor.
“‘S creepy to stare,” Jake mutters into his skin.
Bradley tries not to smile. “You’re lying on top of me, baby,” he says. “Not like I have a whole range of movement here.”
“You calling me fat?”
Jake absolutely knows what he looks like; Bradley’s only known him a week, but in that week, he’s become intimately aware that Jake knows what he looks like. The half of their bullshit rivalry that didn’t come from the heart-stopping second Bradley saw Jake fly and thought Jesus Christ, Mav would love him emerged spotting each other over progressively more ridiculous weightlifting records at the gym. Jake knows what he looks like, he just loves to hear Bradley say it.
“You look good,” Bradley says, because he’s a sucker and Jake’s shifting on top of him, sliding his thick, muscled thigh between Bradley’s.
“Honey,” Jake drawls, propping himself up over Bradley. “I am good. I am very good.”
Hell, Bradley thinks. He can be smart and careful up in the air. He’s twenty-four and he’s gotten where he meant to go despite every shitty curveball life has thrown at him. He can be stupid this once.
Of course, it’s not just once.
“We don’t have to do this here,” Jake offers when it becomes apparent that Bradley doesn’t really know where he’s going with this.
As if on cue, a cheer echoes from the inside of the Hard Deck.
Glancing over his shoulder, Jake rolls his eyes at the sight; Maverick hoisted up by Coyote and Payback in a mockery of how they met that first night, being fed shots straight from the bar by his maybe-girlfriend.
Bradley snorts. “Typical,” he says. He sounds fonder than he is angry, which is progress.
Jake raises an eyebrow at him.
Rubbing a hand over the back of his neck, Bradley nods. “Yeah,” he says. “I owe you a story.”
“You don’t owe me shit,” Jake says. He’s surprised by the vehemence in his own tone. He’s made a point of keeping himself smooth around the edges over the years; unruffled by all the shit people throw in his direction, cool under pressure. Pressure, daddy Seresin used to say, is how they make diamonds. Only piece of advice he ever gave that wasn’t utter bullshit.
Jake swallows heavily.
“You don’t owe me shit,” Jake says. “Not for saving your life.”
“Not for that,” Bradley agrees. “For all the other stuff.”
Jake shakes his head. “Tell me the story because you want to,” he says. “Not because you have to.”
He hates himself a little bit for the way pride swells in his chest when Bradley levels him with a look somewhere between surprise and affection.
It’s not like they’re obvious about it.
That’s the saving grace, in Bradley’s opinion, the one part of the…whatever it is they’re doing that isn’t an instant career killer. No, in public they’re at each other’s throats more often than not. Hangman is legitimately obnoxious, in Bradley’s professional opinion, and the way he flies is a reminder of everything Bradley left behind. Everyone who left him behind.
On particularly bad training days, Phoenix actually texts Coyote to make sure he and Hangman won’t be at whatever bar Rooster and Phoenix rock up to. She thinks Bradley doesn’t know, but he spotted it over her shoulder once.
She doesn’t know that on particularly bad training days, Jake and Bradley text each other, too.
She can’t know. That’s not how these things work.
Bradley doesn’t feel bad about it; it’s just sex.
Sex with an expiration date, even, due to end the minute they graduate Advanced Training, get their wings and get the fuck out of Texas.
He’s more careful than Phoenix about how he angles his phone, that’s all. Uses the thumbs up emoji instead of the eggplant when Jake texts to ask whether he can come over to borrow Bradley’s textbook, even though it’s past midnight on a Friday. Jake understands prioritizing your dreams to the point that even texting your hookup has to be done in code.
He leaves the bar early, leaves Phoenix to her other friends—for all she’s his best friend, he’s well aware he’s only barely edging out the competition when it comes to the reverse. Might as well give them a chance. Phoenix, unlike him, is a well-adjusted human being capable of being close with more than two people at a time.
Jake is punctual, always. There’s a by-the-book quality to his appearance and mannerisms utterly at odds with how he flies, reckless and cocky. Makes Bradley want to mess him up until the real person under the perfectly ironed uniform and the carefully styled hair finally shows up.
The crazy thing is, Jake lets him.
The crazy thing is, that’s what Jake’s here for.
They have a beer first. (If anyone asks, if anyone sees Jake leave, well, that’s all they had.) They talk while they drink, shoot the shit, evaluate today’s training session as if it didn’t end with them both accusing each other of being liable to get others killed with their flying, as if they didn’t easily outmaneuver everyone else on the training course.
Eventually, Jake drains the beer and sets it on the counter.
He’s leaning against it with his shoes off, like he’s comfortable, like he belongs here.
“So, Bradshaw,” he says, smiling his million-watt, utterly fake smile. “What’s a guy gotta do to get shown a good time around here?”
Bradley’s on him in an instant. His own drink is only half done. He’s slow, always too slow, isn’t that what Jake always says?
He never says it here.
Not when Bradley’s crowding him against the kitchen counters, heart-stoppingly domestic if he weren’t kissing Jake like they might both die if he doesn’t. Here, Jake’s soft in Bradley’s grip, his knuckles clenched on the counter and the rest of him bending to what Bradley wants to do to him.
“A good time, huh, baby?” Bradley asks, low in Jake’s ear.
He can feel how Jake shudders against him.
“Want me to take you apart?” he pushes. “Make you scream?”
“Want you to put your money where your goddamn mouth is, sugar,” Jake snarks back, but he tilts his head so Bradley can get his mouth on Jake’s neck.
Bradley’s no Hangman, he’s no Maverick, but he’s got his own cocky grin even if he hides the cut of his teeth in Jake’s skin.
That’s why they do this, after all, him and Jake. To hide the parts of themselves that don’t fit into the rules and structures of the lives they want so desperately. Hangman wouldn’t be caught dead letting some guy push him backwards until he’s splayed across the mattress. He wouldn’t throw his head back and whine when Rooster rucks up his shirt and bites at his nipples.
And Rooster…well, Rooster’s a slow hand. Methodical. Careful. He wouldn’t leave a trail of bites just light enough they don’t show up tomorrow. He wouldn’t box Hangman in with his body, pressing him into the sheets and keeping him there while he takes what he wants.
It’s like a pressure valve, Bradley thinks. A way to let out all the anger he keeps at a simmer. A way for Jake to let someone else take the wheel, just for a little while.
It’s not something they discuss.
What would he even say, he wonders as he pulls off Jake’s clothes roughly, not even bothering to take off his own? I’m honored you let me see you like this?
Not the kind of thing you say to a hook-up. Even if it’s true, even if the way Jake’s spreading his legs to let Bradley slot between them, the way he’s looking up at Bradley all open and desperate for it, is a fucking punch in the gut. It’s a level of trust Bradley’s done fuck-all to deserve, and he’s gonna honor it.
He gets Jake close with just his hand, the first time, wrapped around his cock and stroking slow and tight and sure. Jake’s head twists on the pillow, turning back and forth, teeth bared in desperation for Bradley to speed up, to do more for him. Precome pearls steadily at the head of his cock and drips onto the cut of his abs.
Bradley takes his hand away before Jake can come.
Jake sobs.
He’s not grinning anymore, there are deep lines marring the smooth skin of his forehead as he grimaces in withheld pleasure. He looks almost like he’s in pain. He’s fucking gorgeous. He’s real.
“C’mon, Bradshaw,” Jake demands, raspy and fucked-out already. “Get off your goddamn perch.”
“I dunno,” Bradley says airily, slicking up his fingers and sliding one slowly down between Jake’s legs. “View’s pretty sweet up here.”
Jake chokes on a laugh as Bradley’s finger traces a circle around his rim.
Not for the first time, Bradley’s struck by how much easier it is, here. Here, Jake’s posturing is transparent goading, he doesn’t mean a word of it, he just wants Bradley to take care of him. Here, Bradley’s responses are light, teasing, none of that by-the-book serious-as-a-heart-attack shit he’s known for in the air.
“Bradley,” Jake gasps when Bradley’s got him spread open on two fingers. “Please.”
“Yeah,” Bradley tells him. “I got you, baby.”
He slicks himself up, quick, perfunctory—he doesn’t need much to get going, not with Jake like this, shaking and desperate for him. He could probably stand to spend more time getting Jake ready, but they both know Jake likes it when it hurts just a little.
It’s not even Bradley’s kink, watching Jake’s eyes go wide as he sinks in slowly, inch by inch.
He would swear in front of a court of law that he never used to be this into it, but when Jake bites out, “Jesus fuck, your cock is so fucking big, Rooster,” he groans like he’s been punched.
Gotta be some sort of Pavlovian shit that has the corners of Rooster’s mouth twitching upwards in a smarmy grin, has him going, “Yeah, you like that, don’t you, baby. Like getting stretched open on me, like it when you can feel me later.”
All Jake says is, “Yes,” eyelashes fluttering closed.
Bradley’s not exactly sure when this happened, when he turned into such an expert on Jake Seresin, but he knows to keep it slow and deep to start, knows to keep muttering praise and slightly mocking dirty talk in his ear as he grinds up against Jake’s prostate. It’s not even on purpose, Bradley’s just the right size to hit it without trying.
The first time they did this, Jake’s eyes flew wide open and he actually screamed. Bradley was kind of worried his neighbors would hear, actually.
Fucking Jake on the regular is a danger to Bradley’s ego. Makes him feel like some sort of sex god, the way Jake takes whatever Bradley gives him. The way he begs for it.
Like now, with his ankles hooked around Bradley’s back, he’s begging for it, saying, “Please, Bradley, come on, please, sweetheart, I need it.”
Bradley’s not even sure he knows he’s saying it, that he’s dropped the bravado and the callsigns, that he just wants Bradley now, fucking him just right.
It’s a little mean, but Bradley strokes him just right until he’s moaning and clenching up, and then he stops again.
“You fucking—don’t—fuck, Bradley, please,” Jake gets out. His hair is a mess, his eyes are bright. He’s flushed all down his toned chest.
Bradley licks his lips. “Just a little more,” he says.
He’s close himself, can feel the thrum of his pulse in his balls, the sluggish thread of pleasure he’s been trying to ignore since Jake started begging.
“Anything,” Jake says. “Just…please.”
“Anything?” Bradley asks.
“Anything,” Jake repeats.
Bradley presses down close, kisses him wet and sloppy. When he moves again, it’s none of the deliberation he had before. All of his purpose shot in the heart by the trust Jake put in him, puts in him over and over every time they do this. He fucks Jake hard and sloppy, lube squelching between them, Jake’s legs pressed almost all the way to his shoulders.
Between them, Jake’s cock is rubbing up against Bradley’s stomach with every hitch of Bradley’s hips.
“Yes,” Jake’s saying. “Yes, yes.” Over and over, mumbled between kisses, bitten into the skin of Bradley’s shoulders.
“You’re perfect,” Bradley tells him. “You’re so fucking good, Jake.”
For all he’s loud before, Jake’s quiet when he comes. He arches up as much as he can with Bradley plastered over every inch of his body and locks down tight.
“Fuck,” Bradley breathes out. “Didn’t even have to touch you, huh, baby? You love it that much, you’re so good for me.”
A tiny, hurt noise escapes from Jake’s throat and then it’s all over, wet heat spreading between them as he comes. Bradley screws his eyes shut, lets himself go. It doesn’t take long. He comes like he’s pulling nine Gs, the corners of his vision graying out and the world going quiet around him.
After, they lie side by side on the narrow bed, pressed together from shoulder to waist, legs tangled together. They don’t get up to clean up, and they don’t talk about it, because as soon as they do, Jake will have to leave.
The house is like Jake remembers it.
That is to say, the couch is the same one Carole Bradshaw bought some time in the nineties. There’s a metric fuckton of cheesy beach-themed decor strewn around the living room, and Bradley still hasn’t learned to vacuum corners.
He seems at least aware enough to be mildly embarrassed about it. “I redid the bedrooms,” he offers.
“You sleeping in the master, now?” Jake asks. It’s unnecessarily cruel, and he knows it, but Bradley’s seen him at his cruelest. He can take it.
“Yeah,” Bradley says.
That surprises Jake enough to stop him in his tracks.
“Seriously?” he asks. “I didn’t…”
“You were right,” Bradley says. “It was time.”
“Hold on, hold on,” Jake holds up a hand. “I gotta fix this moment in my memory. Bradley Bradshaw said I was right. That’s one for posterity.”
“Shut the fuck up,” Bradley says mildly. “You want a beer?”
“Sure,” Jake says, even though they should probably stay sober if this is it. If they’re talking about it.
The couch creaks when they sit on it. Now Bradley’s done the bedrooms, Jake should see about getting him to do the living room.
He takes a sip to hide how weird the thought makes him feel, that he has any influence on what Bradley does to this space.
“So,” he says. “You were gonna tell me a story.”
Jake is agitated when they get their deployments.
It’s nothing unexpected, different sides of the world, the natural expiration date of their relationship.
Bradley’s self-aware enough to know he’s emotionally stunted, but he’s not stunted enough to deny that that’s what this is, by now. Better late than never, he guesses, and if a year of fucking Jake exclusively is all he’ll get, at least he’ll value it in hindsight.
“At least you get to go with Phoenix and Coyote,” Bradley points out. He’s getting deployed to Japan. He doesn’t know anyone in Japan.
He wonders if that’s on purpose, if someone pulling the strings is pulling him away from all the people who knew him as a kid, who knew his dad.
“Phoenix hates my guts,” Jake says.
“That’s your own fault, man,” Bradley points out. “You could try not being a dick to her for about a millisecond and she’ll come round.”
“I’ll take that under advisement,” Jake says sourly.
Bradley shifts onto his elbow so he can look at Jake properly. Usually, he quiets down after they fuck, relaxes a bit. Not today. “Seriously,” he says. “What’s wrong?”
Jake sighs, twisting his head so they aren’t looking at each other.
It’s not like Bradley’s happy this is the last time they’ll be together like this. It’s not like he’s thrilled they’re headed off in different directions tomorrow. He just…didn’t think they’d be talking about it. He thought this was the deal they made when they started this, and this was what they’d be living with when it ended.
He’s a little shocked Jake is so visibly bothered.
Not that Jake would care—he knows better than that, by now—but that he’d let Bradley see it.
“I need to update my medical forms,” Jake says.
This is not at all what Bradley expected.
It must show on his face when Jake looks over at him. “I mean…” Jake starts. “Look, this is a dumb question, but can I put you down as my emergency contact?”
“Why?” slips out of Bradley’s mouth before he can stop himself.
“My parents kicked me out when I was eighteen and my sister’s not of age,” Jake snaps. He’s shuttering, every open line of his face turning closed again.
“Sure,” Bradley says. “Put me down.”
Jake blinks. “They could call you in,” he says. “If something happens, if I’m—”
“Put me down,” Bradley says, a really stupid idea starting to form in his head. “Put me down, and I’ll do the same.”
“You don’t have to—”
“Both of my parents are dead,” Bradley says. “So. It’s not like I have anyone either.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah.”
The forms are easy enough to find online, easy enough to print and fill out. It doesn’t feel important or momentous, it feels like paperwork. It feels like a weight off Bradley’s chest that there’s not a single piece of military documentation linking him to Pete Mitchell when they drop the forms in a letterbox at two in the morning.
“Who’d you have down before?” he asks Jake.
“I, uh.” Jake rubs at the back of his neck. “I put down my grandma’s address. She’s been dead about ten years. Kinda hoped no one would notice.”
“What changed?”
He wants to hear…something. You did. I care about you. I want you there if something happens.
That’s not what Jake says, of course. He just shrugs. Bradley imagines he said it anyway.
It’s the only time Jake stays the night, after that. They’ll be gone tomorrow, plausible deniability hardly matters. He’s almost asleep, squished between Jake and the wall, when Jake says, “Thank you.”
He squeezes Jake’s hip in answer.
“Jesus, your life is a tragedy,” Jake says, draining the last of his beer.
Bradley snorts. “Don’t I know it.”
“Seriously, almost everything you just said is incredibly fucked up.”
“Again,” Bradley picks at the label of his grapefruit IPA, because he’s nothing if not a closet hipster. “I was there. I am very aware.”
Jake takes a deep breath. “I’m sorry,” he says.
Bradley looks up sharply.
“I shouldn’t have mentioned your dad,” he says. “I shouldn’t have pushed. And I should have apologized earlier.”
He watches the bob of Bradley’s Adam’s apple as he swallows. “You should have,” Bradley agrees. “Thanks for doing it now.” After a moment, he adds, "I just...I wanted you to know that a lot of shit just happened to me. You, everything with you, no matter how fucked up it's been...I chose that."
It’s dark in the living room. Jake considers switching on the seashell lamp on the shelf next to the couch reserved entirely for knickknacks.
“Where does this leave us?” Bradley asks eventually.
Jake snorts. “In what way?”
Bradley shrugs. “I don’t know. Emotionally, physically. Legally.”
Jake thinks he might be dizzy. He hasn’t drunk that much tonight, but he has been wondering about the answers to that question for a long time. Finally talking about it…it barely even feels real. “Let’s start with the last one,” he says. “That sounds like the easiest part.”
“Well,” Bradley says gamely. “Legally speaking, I think we’re, like, one piece of paper away from being married.”
When Bradley wakes up, Jake’s there.
“What the fuck,” he manages to slur.
“Hi, sweetheart,” Jake says wryly. “Good to see you, too. Gotta say, though, you look like shit.”
With the fog of sleep wearing off, Bradley becomes aware that half his face is bandaged, that his right shoulder and knee ache. “Feel it, too,” he says.
“Apparently, when you land a jet, you’re not supposed to brake with your face,” Jake says. “Who knew. I thought they would have covered that in Basic, but I guess they thought it was too obvious.”
Bradley groans. “Engine failure,” he says. It’s coming back to him, now, the heart-rending moments when a bird strike took out his right engine, forcing him to go low. He barely made it back to the carrier, thought he’d have to eject somewhere over the Pacific.
“I know,” Jake says. His voice goes soft, less hectic than it was, and Bradley realizes he was worried. “I know. You should get some rest.”
“Been resting,” Bradley says, but he lets his eyes fall shut anyway.
It’s not the first they’ve heard from each other since training ended. Bradley keeps in pretty steady touch with Phoenix, sends her pictures and updates on the cool shit he gets to do with the Navy’s planes on a regular basis. From there, it was really only a small step to do the same with Jake, like they were friends the whole time and not rivals in public and something entirely different in private. Jake knows how he’s been; he knows how Jake’s been.
He might not have, if he hadn’t signed that form, the last night they spent together. He might have convinced himself that out of sight, out of mind was better for them both. But every time he landed his plane again, every day he got that much closer to the age his dad had been when it all went wrong—he couldn’t help but remember his own name right next to Jake’s on the forms, reminding him who would be there if it all went wrong.
And then it did go wrong, and now Jake’s here.
Bradley gets a month of medical leave for all his scrapes and bruises and his mild concussion, and Jake takes him home.
“Jesus,” Jake says when they get to the house. “Did the San Diego tourism board vomit on your living room?”
“Shut up, my mom loved it,” Bradley grits out.
Jake doesn’t say anything else about the house, but he doesn’t need to. They sleep side by side, pressed close in the queen bed in the room Bradley grew up in, where he hasn’t redecorated since he was fourteen. He hadn’t even realized he was keeping a shrine to a dead woman until someone else entered the space, but now Jake’s here, Bradley can’t unthink the thought that his mom has been dead for twelve years but she’s still living in this house.
Jake only has two days before he needs to go back to Lemoore. He spends the time changing Bradley’s bandages carefully, going shopping for him and bullying him into taking some Ibuprofen.
Bradley naps a lot.
On the second day, he manages to be mostly awake for dinner—apparently, Jake makes a mean casserole, who knew—and says thank you.
Jake shrugs. “I quite literally signed up for this,” he says.
“Yeah, well,” Bradley says. “I haven’t exactly been showing you a good time.”
The look Jake levels him with could probably kill a man. He should add it to his jet’s arsenal. “Please tell me you’re not apologizing for not having sex with me while you’re recovering from a crash landing.”
Bradley opens his mouth to answer, and winces when it pulls at the cuts by his mouth. “I guess I kinda look like Frankenstein’s monster, huh,” he says.
“That’s not—” Jake looks like he’s about to throttle Bradley, except that that might kill Bradley right now. “Look,” he bites out between gritted teeth, as if it’s causing him actual physical pain to say it. “I haven’t been with anyone since you…since we…whatever. If it’s cool with you, I’ll keep it that way. Still not gonna fuck you when you literally almost died.”
“Oh,” Bradley says. “Um. Okay. Ditto?”
“What the fuck is wrong with you?” Jake mutters as he takes their dishes to the sink and starts washing them by hand.
Bradley really ought to put in a dishwasher one of these days.
“We don’t have time to get into all that,” he jokes weakly.
For a while there’s only the sound of the water on the dishes.
When he’s done, Jake pads back over to the couch. “Are you feeling up to getting into some stuff?” he asks, marginally less pissed off than before.
Bradley’s tired and his head hurts, but that’s pretty par for course right now. “Yeah,” he says.
“Great,” Jake says. “Because it turns out this in case of emergency shit is kind of complicated. Had to take an educated guess that you wouldn’t want them to put you on morphine.”
Bradley shudders, remembering his mom on the stuff towards the end, barely lucid and constantly nauseous. If he doesn’t need that, he doesn’t want that. “Thanks,” he says. “Good call.”
“I’d rather know, next time,” Jake says. “So we’re gonna write it down.”
Neither of them act as if there won’t be a next time. With their jobs, there always will be.
It’s a sobering conversation, and a long one, and by the end, Bradley’s exhausted. He curls up around Jake in bed afterwards, resting on his good side with his bad arm tucked into Jake’s waist.
Jake lets him.
In the morning, he kisses Bradley goodbye carefully, just the corner of his mouth where he can’t touch the bandages, and heads back to Lemoore.
“You know,” Jake starts. His heart is racing so loud he can’t hear much over the rush of blood in his ears. “You know,” he tries again, “when I asked you to be my in case of emergency…person…I did it because I wanted you to stay in my life.”
Bradley does him the kindness of not playing dumb. “Yeah,” he says. “I know. I said yes because I wanted that, too.”
“And because you didn’t want Maverick to have any sway over you anymore,” Jake guesses. He’d wondered why “Pete Mitchell” rang such a bell; turns out he’d seen Bradley write the name out once before, when he was removing the last legal right Maverick had over him.
“That, too,” Bradley says. “I can want lots of things.”
“Do you want me?” The words tumble out of Jake’s mouth like a train wreck, like a busted up F-14 crash-landing on an aircraft carrier.
“Of course I do,” Bradley says instantly. “I’ve always wanted you, baby.”
That much is definitely true. The sex has always been goddamn amazing, but that’s not what Jake’s here for, not why he’s sitting in Bradley’s shrine of a living room in the dark, trying to talk out this thing they’ve been doing for going on eight years now.
Jake closes his eyes and takes a deep breath. On the list of bad life advice given to him by daddy Seresin that Jake can never quite shake, nut up or shut up is top of the list. “I mean,” he says. “Do you want me? Because I’m in love with you, and you gotta know I’d marry you in a heartbeat.”
“Christ,” Bradley says. “You always were the brave one.”
It’s not an answer.
Jake sits still, frozen in the headlights of his own words, waiting.
“I love you, too,” Bradley says eventually. “Maybe I always knew.”
Jake lets himself exhale. “Dumbass,” he says. “I always knew.”
“Really?” Bradley asks. “Always?”
And, well. Jake loves him. So he thinks about it. That first week, teasing each other in the classroom and the gym. How he couldn’t help but always push Bradley a little bit further in the hopes he’d snap and just fucking touch Jake. How even when Bradley had snapped, he kept going, regardless of the fact that if they got caught, they could lose out on everything. How he’d let Bradley see and touch every part of him he didn’t want anyone else to know about.
“Always,” he says.
Bradley’s big hand cups Jake’s cheek. “Sorry I’m so slow,” he says. “I’m told it’s a character flaw.”
“You speed up when it counts,” Jake says hoarsely in the split second before their lips collide.
They spend the first Christmas they both have leave in Bradley’s house, studiously ignoring the holiday, the twenty different season’s greetings messages they get in the various WhatsApp groups one or both of them are in, and the way Jake’s eyes linger on the pink skin of the healed-over scars on Bradley’s face.
Jake fucks Bradley for the first time on the living room floor.
It’s not something Bradley knew either of them wanted, but they have two whole weeks and no interruptions or other responsibilities, and Jake says Bradley needs to give him a fucking break because his “monster cock” is “too much to take twice a day”. This unfortunately gets Bradley so hot he needs something, which ends up with Jake kneeling between Bradley’s legs on the living room carpet, fucking him open slowly and carefully on his fingers.
Bradley makes a whole series of noises he didn’t know he was capable of.
They both get fucking awful rug burn on their knees, and afterwards, Bradley has to run out to CVS and buy carpet shampoo because he comes all over the floor with Jake hot and hard behind and inside him, fucking him just right.
“I can’t believe you didn’t have any fucking cleaning supplies,” Jake observes from the couch as Bradley cleans up.
“Yeah, well,” Bradley snaps, “we can’t all be fucking Martha Stewart.”
Jake sniffs disdainfully, but returns to fucking around on his phone. He really is alarmingly handy around the house, cleans up after himself and does the damn dishes. It’s irritating in that it’s perfect.
“My dad used to get mad if my room was a mess,” Jake says, light and conversational and like he says things like that all the time.
“Are we talking like…Phoenix when you leave her hanging mad?” Bradley asks.
“Nah,” Jake waves that away, eyes still glued to his phone. “More like…I don’t know. One corner of the bedsheets not tucked in proper and he’d go ballistic.”
“He military?”
“Army,” Jake confirms.
“Must hate that you’re in the Navy.”
Jake shrugs. “I’ll never know.”
Bradley doesn’t ask, but apparently Jake’s in a sharing mood, because he elaborates. “He found enough other things to hate about me, anyway. Mostly what we just did on that there carpet.”
“I’m sorry,” Bradley says. He hates it when people apologize for his parents being dead; he was glad Jake didn’t, when he mentioned it. He hasn’t thought of anything else he’d like to hear instead, though, so here he is, saying the same shit.
Jake just shrugs. “This is a better Christmas, anyway.”
They’ve had sex before. They’ve had a lot of sex over the years, squished onto shitty furniture in on-base housing, in the living room and the kitchen and Bradley’s bedroom in the house his parents left him, once, memorably, in the bunk bed of a room Jake was sharing with someone else when they were deployed at the same time and couldn’t make it through the full two months without at least touching each other once.
This is different.
For one, Jake hasn’t been in this room before.
Even when he was at Top Gun, one year before Bradley, and Bradley texted him where the spare key was, told him he could stay in the house instead of on base, he didn’t go into this room. Bradley made it down to Miramar two weekends of the Top Gun program and spent them almost entirely in bed with Jake, in the shitty queen in his old room they’ve been progressively breaking one fuck at a time since the first time Jake was here and Bradley wasn’t concussed.
Bradley never told Phoenix he was here, when she and Jake were in Top Gun, never met up with her. Just Jake.
Jake tried not to feel smug about it, well aware it was ridiculous he was so jealous of Bradley having friends.
He’s always been possessive when it comes to Bradley.
The master bedroom of the house is upstairs, past the pictures on the wall, pictures of baby Bradley with his chubby cheeks and his mustachioed dad, pictures of Maverick with his arm around teenage Bradley and a baseball bat in Bradley’s hand. Jake had never thought to ask, until he met Maverick.
It’s the only room in the house that looks even a little bit modern. The bed’s new. It’s a king—a California king, fucking massive. The sheets are purple. The walls are sleek white, and the closet has a sliding door with a full mirror. There are no knickknacks lying around; the lighting is subtle and there’s an actual, functional dimmer switch.
“Looks good,” Jake says.
Bradley makes a sound of frustration and pushes him down on the bed.
Jake blinks up at him, unsure.
“I picked these sheets,” Bradley says, “because I thought you’d look good on them.”
“Oh,” Jake says.
“I got the fucking enormous closet because you hate when there’s shit on the floor,” Bradley continues. “And I got the bed so we would actually have space, because every time you’re here I sleep like shit because it gets so damn hot.”
“You…”
“I want you here,” Bradley says plainly.
“You do love me,” Jake realizes.
“I just said so.”
“Yeah, well,” Jake scoffs. “It’s been, like, eight years of some very confusing mixed signals.”
Probably, Bradley doesn’t have a decent comeback to that, because he presses Jake down into the sheets—the sheets he picked for Jake, apparently—and kisses him until neither of them can think.
Jake calls Bradley half an hour after he gets home from deployment.
“What’s up?” Bradley yawns. “I thought you were out on—”
“I am, I’ve got like five minutes for this,” Jake says impatiently. “I need you to go to the bank for me.”
Bradley’s eyebrows rise. “The bank,” he repeats.
“Yes,” Jake says. “Look, apparently I have a bunch of suspicious transactions on my credit card, and I can’t do shit about it from the middle of the ocean besides getting the card blocked, can you just—”
“Oh, shit,” Bradley says, setting his phone on speaker and grabbing the notepad Jake left in the kitchen to write shopping lists on. “Sure. What do you need me to do?”
Jake lays out the details, emails him a PDF file with his written and signed consent for Bradley to handle it all in person.
It ends up taking Bradley most of the next day to find someone at the local Wells Fargo branch who is willing and able to help him with the details. It’s lucky he’s here, now, actually; reception is spotty at best out on the ocean and having more than fifteen minutes of downtime put together to deal with shit like this would be a fucking miracle. Jake would have to wait months to get it sorted.
He writes his own copy of the same document Jake emailed him, and then he sticks them both in the binder on the shelf in the kitchen with his mom’s old cookbooks where their copies of all the medical forms rest.
He ends up having to ship out again before Jake even gets back, but it makes him feel more settled, knowing there’s someone he can call just in case, someone who knows where all his shit is, both physically and in terms of someone out there actually being able to do something useful with the money accumulating in his account if he dies.
On the plane back to base, he finds himself drifting into thoughts about whether he should name Jake as a beneficiary in his will.
He does it before he can talk himself out of it.
Jake’s always felt good with Bradley. That’s never been an issue.
He’s never felt like this, though. Treasured. Loved.
It’s slow, this time, both the build-up and the pay-off. Bradley’s not trying to tease him, he’s just actually being careful, making sure Jake’s feeling good. There’s a difference to the slant of his mouth, the choice to press kisses to Jake’s chest, to his neck, rather than bites.
When Jake thought about how it would be between them, after he saved Bradley’s life, he thought it would be desperate. Needy. Thought it would hurt.
He didn’t think Bradley would be kissing him slow and sweet when he finally slid inside.
Didn’t think their fingers would tangle together beside Jake’s head while Bradley fucked him slow and gentle, so sweet Jake thought he’d go out of his mind with it.
He likes this, though, this strangely delicate thing blossoming between them, the way Bradley holds him close.
Orgasm is an afterthought, just the last of the tension seeping out as Bradley strokes him to completion.
After, they lie together in the center of the massive bed Bradley bought them.
“So,” Bradley says. “You’ll marry me, then?”
Jake blinks. “I don’t actually remember talking about that.”
Bradley kisses his shoulder. “You’re pretty much stuck with me. Might as well get the tax break.”
“And they say romance is dead.”
Bradley leans up to look Jake dead in the eye. “The only ring I have is my dad’s,” he says. “And I’m thinking…I’m thinking I want to give you something new. No more ghosts.”
“Will you buy a damn dishwasher?” Jake asks.
“Baby,” Bradley grins. “If you marry me, I’ll let you pick the model.”
Bradley calls Jake to say he’ll be in Miramar for the foreseeable future when he gets called back to Top Gun. It’s a matter of course; he always calls Jake when he knows he’ll be stateside for a while and usually, they can make it work for a weekend of two at least.
Usually, Jake doesn’t say, “No shit, me too.”
For a moment, Bradley’s heart beats double-time, the thought of the two of them sharing space in the house, of getting to show Jake all the changes he made to the master bedroom, maybe getting a handle on the living room—
It all goes up in smoke when Jake says, “Javy will be there, too, apparently. He wants to share quarters.”
“Oh,” Bradley says.
“I guess I should say yes?” Jake asks. “Or he’ll start to think…”
“Yeah,” Bradley agrees, like it’s still 2008, like it’s still like it was when they started this, furtive and secret in the dark with both of them acting like it doesn’t mean what it does.
What else would he say? Come over, stay with me, it’s your house too, practically. Anyway, being gay won’t get them kicked out, but fraternizing sure as fuck will. What else the Navy makes of the unbelievably incriminating paper trail between the two of them other than flagrant and frequent fraternization is anyone’s guess.
So, they don’t stay in the same house. Instead, they act like they used to, all show-boating and words that scrape across the delicate parts like razors.
Afterwards, they meet in the men’s room, sordid and cramped, and they make out in one of the stalls like teenagers who ought to know better. Bradley doesn’t say, I know you fly so fast because no one ever watched your back. Jake doesn’t say, I know you fly so slow because no one ever came back to you.
The desperate kisses they press into each others mouths and necks and cheekbones scream, I’ll watch your back, I’ll come back, I will, I will, I will.
They have two full months of leave. It’s more than Bradley got when he fucked up his face. It’s more than either of them have ever gotten, together. Bradley’s not even hurt that bad, ejection and crash landing and all. He’s got some joint pain, whiplash for the first few days, and for all Jake still likes to make sure he’s doing his recommended PT, he’s good.
No, the real issue is that the Navy has no fucking clue what to do with them. Both of them disobeyed orders; both of them came out of it looking like big damn heroes. All of them came out of it at all. No one was expecting that, and now they have to figure out what to do with six world-class pilots more than they expected to still have.
Maybe Jake should be more concerned that his employer didn’t expect him to survive, but he got over that a long time ago. He’ll take the two months with a please and thank you.
It’s dangerously comfortable.
Some days, Bradley drives out to Maverick’s hidey-hole in the desert and communes with him over scrap metal and exhaust fumes. They probably don’t do as much talking as the military-appointed therapist they both had to see thinks they should, but Bradley comes back centered, settled.
While he’s gone, Jake tackles the kitchen.
There’s a lot to consider; how high the oven should go—those lucky pilots who make it to old age aren’t exactly known for having good backs, Jake’s leaning towards chest height so there’s no lifting—what color the cabinets should be, where the dishwasher will go. He didn’t actually think he’d care this much, but it’s a surprisingly involved process.
He gets the planning done a month into their leave and then realizes that will leave them with a week entirely without a kitchen while the new one gets put in.
Bradley just shrugs when Jake tells him. “How else was that gonna work?” he asks. “Gotta be while we’re here, right? Who else would let the workmen in?”
“I guess,” Jake says doubtfully. “And you’re sure you’re okay with this?”
“Yes,” Bradley says patiently for the thousandth time. “The cabinets were dated in ‘86 already and I hate doing the dishes. Hey, how about we go on a honeymoon while the kitchen’s out?”
Jake blinks.
He keeps managing to forget it happened, last week, between Bradley’s second trip to Mav’s hangar and Jake’s first to IKEA.
They did do it, though. Went down to city hall, signed the paperwork with a court-appointed witness (“Look,” Bradley said, having the good grace to sound embarrassed, “do you want to try explaining this to Coyote? Because Phoenix might actually kill me.” Given that even if Jake had been willing to have that conversation, which he wasn’t, both Coyote and Phoenix and pretty much everyone else they knew except for Maverick was using their leave to visit family, the option was out anyway). They kissed right there, where someone else could see, in broad daylight when it was over.
“We could do that,” Jake allows. “Where, though?”
Bradley shrugs. “Somewhere sunny,” he suggests.
Dubiously, Jake points out to the perfect weather happening right outside the kitchen window.
“How about Jamaica?” Bradley asks, not one to be discouraged.
“Seriously?” Jake asks.
Bradley shrugs. “We can afford it. Anyway, you only get married once.”
It’s not true in this day and age, and what’s more, both Bradley’s parents and Jake’s parents are poignant examples of why it’s a bad call to stick to your guns that strongly for just one other human being, but Jake’s already shot himself pretty thoroughly in the foot as far as that’s concerned. He’s not going anywhere.
“Okay,” he says. “Jamaica.”
Bradley knows that training is going very badly.
More than that, he knows he’s being a dick about it.
Phoenix very helpfully pointed that out, more than once, but Bradley can’t seem to shut it off. Maverick’s presence, the thought of him being here, of judging Bradley and finding him lacking once again—it bothers Bradley more than he can say.
And he can’t say. He can’t seem to make the words come out, not to Maverick and not to Jake when he asks, hushed in the stillness of an empty locker room.
He wonders if it would be easier if Jake came home with him at the end of the day, if they weren’t still playing this endless charade of being Rooster and Hangman, if he could just man up and tell Jake everything. He wants to. The words just get stuck in his throat and Jake goes back to the soulless on-base apartment he’s splitting with Coyote.
Bradley doesn’t even realize he’s hurting Jake as much as he’s hurting himself until Jake lashes out at him in front of everyone, brings his dad and Mav screaming to the foreground of everyone’s mind.
He’s not expecting an apology. Jake doesn’t really do that, he’s very much an actions-over-words guy. Bradley would know; he’s the one who put Jake in as the major beneficiary of his will, and he saw the look on Jake’s face when he told Jake about it.
What he gets is Jake falling into the sand beside him after a rules-less game of football on the beach.
“Javy thinks you might kill me,” Jake says conversationally. “He’s watching us from the Hard Deck, so don’t move your mouth too much.”
“I overreacted yesterday,” Bradley says. He doesn’t turn around, although it takes effort. “Shouldn’t have gotten physical. Sorry.” He didn’t even end up touching Jake, and he’s not sure what he would have done if he had. He likes to think he'd have kissed Jake to shut him up rather than punching him, but he's not sure enough to say it.
Jake shrugs. “I provoked you. I wanted to get you mad.”
“Why would you want that?” Bradley asks. From everything he knows about Jake’s family, the last thing he needs is more people angry at him.
Jake sighs, digging his heels into the sand. “So you’d react to me at all. It’s like you’re someone totally different since we got here, Bradley. You’re…you’re scaring me.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t fucking apologize,” Jake snaps. “Make it better. Talk to me.”
Bradley tries. All that comes out is, “If I don’t make it, you can ask Maverick.”
“Fuck you,” Jake says. His voice is shaking. “Fuck you, Rooster. Why the fuck do you think I’m fighting you so hard on this? You can’t—you’re not allowed to—”
Bradley doesn’t look at him—can’t, or he’ll start crying, and then Coyote will get suspicious—when he says, “Neither are you. Flying like Mav gets people killed, Jake.”
“Didn’t get him killed,” Jake says, and then he gets up and leaves.
They spend four days in Jamaica and Jake spends the entirety getting lightly buzzed on fruity cocktails and getting his mind blown by his husband. Bradley shaves off the mustache expressly so that he can rim Jake without giving him beard burn, and his face looks wrong without it, but it feels so good Jake’s willing to accept the trade-off so long as he grows it back by the end of leave.
If this is what married life entails, they were stupid to put it off for so long.
There are still two weeks of leave left over when they get back. The kitchen gets put in the next day, so clean and gleaming it takes them another two days to actually use it.
The momentum of the kitchen finally being done gets them through sorting out the living room, all the things Bradley’s parents left behind he’s never managed to look at properly before. “My mom grew up in Texas,” Bradley mutters, putting the seashell lamp in the “give away” box. “Nowhere near the beach.”
“Maybe that’s why,” Jake offers.
They end up keeping a lot of it, taped up in neat boxes in the attic beside all the shit from Bradley’s childhood room he hasn’t touched in years.
They pick out a new couch. Get a bigger TV.
The Friday before their leave ends, they take Bradley’s Bronco and swing by the storage unit Jake’s had for five years and add his meager pile of boxes full of ghosts. The attic’s big enough for two graveyards.
After, they sit in the living room with a bottle of wine.
Neither of them really drinks wine, but it seems appropriate.
“Where do you think you’ll end up?” Bradley asks.
Jake shrugs. “Probably back at Lemoore, I guess.”
“I’m gonna miss you,” Bradley says.
He never used to say that.
“I always miss you,” Jake says.
“That why you text so much?”
Jake pokes him with his foot. “Fuck you. You seeing Mav this weekend?”
“Thought I’d spend it with you instead.”
The goodbye ahead of them is momentous, looming and huge in a way it never has been before, and Jake appreciates that Bradley’s letting them savor it. Used to be, he'd soldier through the goodbye, never quite sure if and when they'd see each other again.
Now, something in Jake settles, comes to rest, lets him acknowledge that it’s a goodbye for now, not for good.
The peace lasts him till they get their orders on Monday.
After Coyote’s G-LOC, after the bird strike, they fuck savagely over the arm of the shitty couch in the shitty apartment Coyote and Jake are splitting.
Bradley feels like he should be nicer about it; Jake just nearly lost his best friend. Bradley just nearly lost his best friend.
It’s not an excuse, but Jake goads him into it, begging for more and faster and harder, taunting Rooster to get off his damn perch already. Jake’s always known what buttons to push to drive Bradley out of his mind.
After, he wants to say, come home with me. Talk to me. Let me talk to you. He wants to say, you’ve never left me hanging when it counted. He wants to say, I’m sorry I ever gave you that dumb callsign in the first place.
Instead, both their phones beep with incoming orders to attend a funeral in the morning.
Instead, Bradley leaves with a lingering kiss by the door that’s both too soft and nowhere near soft enough.
Instead, Jake's fingertips linger at the scars on Bradley's jaw.
Instead, they watch on as the question becomes not which of them will be team leader but which of them will watch the other one die.
They both have nightmares the night before they’re due back.
It’s some sort of psychic bullshit, Jake knows. Something about how aggressively they pushed all thoughts of their real lives and their jobs and everything complicated to the side and spent two months getting married and doing home improvement. Now that going back’s inevitable, all that trauma’s bound to bubble up.
Bradley finds him at four in the morning, in the gleaming, brand new kitchen, drinking water and white-knuckling the fake marble counter.
“You too, huh?” he asks.
Jake nods wordlessly.
“What was it?”
Jake sets down the glass of water. His hands are shaking. “I was too late. F-14 went down.”
Bradley’s face doesn’t reveal any response. “I dreamt I was dagger spare,” he offers. “Couldn’t decide to get off my ass and save you.”
“You would have,” Jake says instantly.
“You weren’t too late,” Bradley reminds him.
“Right.” Jake takes a deep breath. He looks around the kitchen—their kitchen. He might not see it again.
Bradley takes his hand on the counter-top. “I can’t promise I’ll come back,” he says. His eyes are sad, serious.
You did, Jake wants to scream, you said in sickness and health. You said I do. At the same time, he knows intimately why Bradley would never promise to come back. Not in so many words. “I know,” he says. “I know.”
A ghost of a smile steals across Bradley’s face. “I can promise to try, though,” he offers.
They don’t go back to bed. Instead, they fall asleep side by side on the couch to reruns of Bob Ross.
In the morning, they report to Admiral Simpson.
They report to Admiral Simpson, and he asks them to stay.
Over the buzzing in his ears, Jake makes out phrases like “permanent Dagger squadron” and “teaching hours” and “possibility of advancement”.
“Will you let us work together if we’re married?” Jake asks, way too sudden and interrupting the superior officer whose orders he already ignored once.
Simpson’s hands twitch in his perfect parade rest. “Excuse me?” he asks.
“Lieutenant Bradshaw and I. Can we work together even though we’re married?”
Bradley’s neck is bright red next to him. “Jake,” he hisses through clenched teeth.
“I’m not getting a divorce so we can work together,” Jake hisses back.
Bradley doesn’t answer, but his shoulders straighten, knocking against Jake’s. He’s with Jake on this.
Admiral Simpson rubs his hand over his forehead. He mumbles something that sounds like he’s asking for patience from above. “It shouldn’t be an impediment in this case,” he admits eventually. “In the event of special deployment, you wouldn’t be deployed together, and I’ll be expecting a certain amount of discretion on the job, but otherwise, yes, I will let you work together.”
After a moment of stunned silence, Bradley says. “Thank you for the opportunity. Sir.”
Simpson nods sharply and with that, they’re dismissed.
It is, on paper, everything Jake could ask for. They get to stay together. They get to stay safe, for the most part. There’s even a chance of a promotion headed his way, and he’ll get it, because he’s the best.
It’s terrifying.
“You’re gonna get sick of me,” he says, only half-joking as they walk down the halls towards administration.
Bradley snorts. “Nice try,” he says, “but you’re not getting rid of me that easy.”
They hand in their documentation—their marriage license, and the secretary is the first person to offer them congratulations.
When Bradley’s plane gets shot down, he doesn’t regret anything but Jake.
He doesn’t regret saving Mav, and he doesn’t regret that he got picked over Jake. All he regrets as he pushes the eject button is that Jake is going to have to untangle the mess of the investment accounts he inherited from his parents and hasn’t touched for his entire adult life.
It’s not until he’s back on the carrier, sweated through and dazed, Jake’s hand clasped in his, that he realizes it’s time he did something about that.